In Towne Marina Lake Waconia Ice Report - 12/19/16

As promised, we took another Lake Waconia ice walk today, 12/19.  We apologize for the audio quality of the video at the end, but it's visually a good representation of what to expect on the lake right now.  This time we went a little further to the middle of the Waconia Bay weedline. As we expected, the 2nd round of snow we received this past Friday and Saturday continued to slow the ice-making process, even though temps dipped in the -20’s at night. We are now finding snow measuring 6 to 10 inches deep, with areas of slush that have 1 to 2 (or more) inches of water above the ice.  Granted, there are plenty of non-slush areas right now, but the minute you drill a hole, expect to be surrounded by about an inch or more of water.  As for the ice itself, we were seeing a consistent 4 to 4-1/4 inches of clear black ice in the number of holes we drilled.  There are some areas of ice where the previous cracks had been flooded and re-frozen that you can find more thickness of mixed ice (black ice with frozen slush), or layered ice (original black ice with a layer of water and an inch to 2 inch top layer of frozen slush).  Needless to say, it’s a mixed bag of ice depending on where you go.  The one common theme is the snow.  If you’re looking to scratch your ice fishing itch, getting out will be a difficult haul.  At this time we are ONLY recommending walking, and caution you to check ahead of yourself (as we have checked very little of the lake as of yet).  Due to the difficulty of comfortably getting on and off the lake with fishing gear and a mild week of weather that will stunt ice growth even more, our bait shop will remain closed through this Christmas weekend as we wait for better ice conditions to come.  Our next update is likely to come this Thursday or Friday.